SHORT STUDIES. 
authentic is known, except that she was & religious 
woman who brought up her children in the fear of 
God. She lived till her son was twenty-one. The 
father had been impoverished by fires in the city, 
and was unable to give the child as expensive an 
education as he had desircd.* Nor was he perhaps 
wise in his own management, if an anecdote told by 
Fitzstephen, the most sober of the archbishop’s bio- 
zraphers, is really true. He had sent the young 
Thomas to school at Merton Abbey. He went once 
to see him there, and when the boy was brought in, 
he fell on his knees before him and adored him. 
“What do you, foolish old man?’ the prior, who was 
present; said. ‘Fall at your son’s feet! He should 
rather fall at yours” ‘Sir, said Gilbert Becket 
opinion had been thatthe Beckets 
were of Saxon extraction. An 
anonymous biographer, however, 
asserts that Gilbert Becket came 
from Rouen and his wife from 
Unen, and there is now na disposi- 
tion to accept this positive stale- 
ment as conelusive. It does not 
vppear, however, who this anony- 
mous Writer was, and his author- 
ity is weakened by Ihe name 
which he gives to Becket’s 
mother. Al the other bio- 
graphers who were personully 
"oHHinafe with the archhichert 
ı call her Matilda. 'Uhe anonym- 
ous writer calls her Rose, Very 
little is probably known about 
the matter, A tradition arose, 
and was at one time generally 
believe, that she was a Saracen, 
This is doubtless u legend ; but 
the Norman origin is unproved 
also. Sco Materials, vol. iv. 
p. 81. 
1 “Pater quippe Jam senuerat 
necc ad fill sumptus sulicere 
poterat substantia que remansit.’ 
Materials, vol. 1. p. 359.